Singapore: Governments are set to fall well short of meeting a major UN target to protect and conserve biodiversity in at least 30% of the world's land and seas by 2030, research published on Wednesday showed.

As part of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework agreed in late 2022, nearly 200 countries signed on to the "30 by 30" goal and pledged to mobilise at least $200 billion a year to reverse decades of biodiversity loss.

But while another 1.3 million sq km of land and 6 million sq km of marine areas have come under formal protection since the agreement went into effect, total coverage is still only 20% and 10% respectively, according to research by several environmental groups led by the US-based Campaign for Nature.

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The findings are in line with an official progress report due to be submitted to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity conference in Yerevan, Armenia, next month.

A draft released in July warned that none of the 23 goals in the agreement would be reached by 2030 "unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly".

"Progress is being made clearly, but it is uneven, and it is clearly also not at the pace and scale required to achieve the Framework's 23 targets by 2030," Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the UNCBD, said at a briefing this month.

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The Campaign for Nature report said around 26% of terrestrial and inland water areas would be protected if all existing government pledges were fulfilled by 2030, but only 13% of marine ecosystems would be covered.

The annual funding shortfall is approximately $75 billion to $150 billion, with spending on marine protection standing at just $1.8 billion, well below the $16 billion required, it said.

Even if the "30x30" targets were achieved, more efforts were needed to ensure that ecosystems were genuinely protected, it said, noting that of the 10% of the ocean currently covered by protection plans, only 3.5% was considered "effectively" protected.

"There's a significant gap between protection on paper and protection in practice. A line on a map does not mean protection in the water," said Pauli Merriman, senior director for oceans at WWF International.